closed, and he rode round to the west, where he saw his uncle's anxious
face at a drawing-room window. Mr. Lytton flung himself across the sash
in an attempt to lift the boy from his horse into the room, and when
Alexander shouted that he was on his way to the Mitchell estate,
expostulated as well as he could without breaking his throat. He begged
him to rest half an hour at least, but when informed that the Fort for
the first time within the memory of man had fired its double warning, he
ran to fasten his hurricane windows more securely, and despatch a slave
to warn his blacks; their huts never would survive the direct attack of
a hurricane. He was horrified to think of his favourite exposed to a
fury, which, clever and intrepid as he was, he had small chance of
outwitting; but at least he had that one chance, and Mrs. Mitchell was
alone.

Alexander passed through one other estate before he reached Mr.
Mitchell's, terrifying those he warned almost as much by his wild and
ragged appearance--his long hair drove straight before him, and his thin
shirt was in sodden ribbons--as by his news that a first-class hurricane
was upon them. At last he was in the cane-fields of his destination, and
the horse, as if in communication with that ardent brain so close to his
own, suddenly accelerated his already mercurial pace, until it seemed to
Alexander that he gathered up his legs and darted like an inflated
swallow straight through crashing avenues and flying huts to the stable
door. Fortunately this solid building opened to the west, and Alexander
was but a few moments stalling and feeding the animal who had saved two
necks by his clever feet that day. He was sorry so poorly to reward him
as to close and bar the door, but he feared that he might forget to
attend to it when the hurricane veered, and in all the fury of
approaching climax was pouring out of the west.